Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00I'm Makai Pfeiffer. As an actor, I know the power of the human voice, and the program
00:06you're about to see contains some of the most powerful voices I've ever heard. In the summer
00:12of 2004, a group of journalists traveled for 70 days by bus around the country on a mission
00:19to record stories from people who lived through the Civil Rights era, an era marked by intense
00:24emotion, turmoil, and change. The mission, called Voices of Civil Rights, is a project
00:30of the AARP, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights and the Library of Congress.
00:36Today, we are proud to let you hear the words and see the faces of the people who lived
00:41through this difficult period in our history. Some of them have been waiting a lifetime
00:46to share their stories.
00:54I remember being born in the segregated south of Memphis, Tennessee.
01:10We lived back in Arkansas at this time.
01:12In Hattiesburg, Mississippi.
01:14Tallahassee, Florida.
01:15Matthewsville, Kentucky.
01:17This takes place in 1963, when I was 11 years old.
01:211959 or 1960, it's been a long time.
01:25I consider myself a witness, living witness, for the Civil Rights Movement. A lot of people
01:33talk about what they hear, or what someone else told them, but I am talking about what
01:41I went through as an individual.
01:47In elementary and high school, I kind of felt that there were two Americas, black American
01:55and white American. I just belonged to black America.
01:59I had grown up in a segregated society.
02:02So you realize very early that you just lived different lives.
02:05It didn't affect me when I was young, because I thought that's just the way it was supposed
02:09to be.
02:10We lived in a black society, and that was the white society.
02:12No mingling of the races.
02:17When I was a little girl, I used to walk along Madison Avenue, holding my daddy's hand.
02:23He'd always take his baby shopping, and there was a restaurant called Piccadilly's.
02:27You could always see white people sitting in the restaurant, eating, and the food looked
02:33absolutely scrumptious.
02:34And it smelled good, like it had the neighborhood almost lit up.
02:37I know it had the street lit up.
02:40And I was like, why can't they eat in there, and I can't?
02:43And dad would kind of snatch my hand and say, stop staring in there.
02:47Daddy was a very proud man, you know, and he just didn't want me staring and wishing.
02:52He used to say those things, don't stare and wish you could do things.
02:55The only thing I knew was the blacks who lived right down the road, they were worse off than
03:02I was.
03:03We lived on the top of the hill. The blacks lived down at the bottom of the hill.
03:08We had a wonderful black woman who was our cook and maid.
03:12A lady that my mother hired to come and clean.
03:14And it was a wonderful lady by the name of Rosie. And Rosie was like my mother. She played
03:23with me, she read to me, she cooked. I loved her. I loved Rosie. I still love Rosie.
03:30The city bus would take Rosie back home. And as the bus got Rosie, I would kiss her
03:37on the cheek and she'd kiss me.
03:40And one day, right as the bus was leaving and Rosie had kissed me and I had kissed her,
03:45all of a sudden I saw my grandfather pounding on that glass window.
03:50And he told me that I was not supposed to be kissing, to use his term, negros.
03:57That that's not something that good white boys did and that it was wrong.
04:04And he grabbed me hard by the arm and spanked me. And I cried and I ran out.
04:12My whole world was turned upside down because what I thought was right was now wrong.
04:18And I was very, very angry.
04:26We were taught at home that we were just as good as anybody else. But in what we call
04:32the real world, we always knew that it was different.
04:35Basically, I think I was just protected by my parents.
04:39We were kept in a sort of controlled environment.
04:42When we went to town, we didn't eat in restaurants, so therefore we didn't go through the back
04:46door.
04:47Our parents in the community tried to insulate us from those kinds of things.
04:50We never knew that we were living really in a form of slavery. For all the things we were
04:55not allowed to do.
04:58We were only allowed to go to places like the zoo on Thursdays. Thursdays was Color
05:04Day.
05:05To the Fairgrounds Amusement Park on Tuesdays, because that was Color Day.
05:09I remember asking my dad, I said, Dad, let's go and see this movie at the Strand, or let's
05:15go see this movie at the, at the Malco.
05:17He said, son, we can't go down there. I said, well, why not? He said, well, that's just
05:22for white people.
05:23There was a separate theater, and there was only one day a week that you could go.
05:26That's for white people.
05:28I loved to read, and I couldn't go downtown to the library.
05:30Hey, listen, what about the Fairgrounds?
05:32Hey, you know, why can't I go there?
05:34I felt like if they're advertising it on television, why can't I go out?
05:38We were not allowed. It didn't mean us.
05:40Once you grow up and you begin to read, you start seeing the white only and colored only
05:45signs.
05:46Something so simple as a Dairy Queen, and it had a white sign, and the color, the color
05:51had to go in the bag.
05:52The white water fountain was big and tall, and then on the side, you'd have this little
05:56attachment that looked like a toilet bowl.
05:58You were getting all of these messages all the time.
06:02Everything was separate. It wasn't really equal. It was just separate.
06:08Santa would come to town on Christmas Eve, and I remember our parents would always take
06:13us down to see Santa, and he would come through downtown, but downtown was roped off, where
06:19we had the viewing area.
06:26The viewing area for black people was different from where the white people could be. They
06:32could be lined up on both sides of the sidewalk for blocks down the street, and we all heard
06:39it off in one little area.
06:50Growing up for me, I had rules. We had do's and don'ts.
06:58First of all, you don't look a white man in the face. You hold your head down, because
07:04the first thing he's going to say, are you eyeballing me, boy?
07:08You don't say no to any request, even if it's wrong.
07:14The best thing to do is do what they tell you to do and try to get away from it.
07:22Being disrespectful or alleged to have been disrespectful to a white person could result
07:27in death. Your elders, your parents, told you just be careful around white people, because
07:32this is what they would do to you if you got out of line.
07:34I could walk into a room full of white people, and within seconds, I could spot the ones
07:41that I needed to keep my eyes on.
07:43We couldn't look at a white man and say, man, I don't want to hear that. I mean, you're
07:48lying. What you said needed to be said.
07:51I used to see people just coming from church. Police pull up behind them and stop. They
07:56get out.
07:57Yes, sir. Yes, sir.
08:00A young white kid called my dad, boy.
08:03I'm telling you, I'm a big muscle, but I don't like my uncles and stuff, you know?
08:06I wondered why he didn't call him sir.
08:11I'm sorry, sir. I'm sorry.
08:14Yeah, you ought to be sorry. You're a sorry nigga, aren't you?
08:16Yes, sir.
08:17Yeah, stuff like that.
08:19And I asked my dad, why did he call you boy? And he said, that's the way it is down here,
08:24son.
08:28I remember distinctly seeing the little wooden clip-on sign that said for colored only, and
08:34those were always placed toward the back of the bus.
08:37It was something that you just sort of lived with. You saw it every day.
08:40Blacks had to pay money in the front, then walk around to the back door.
08:44And the bus may pull off while you're going from one door to the other.
08:48And a lot of times when there were no more seats up front, the white passengers would
08:53come to the back and we would have to still get up and give them our seats.
08:58I was about 10 years old in 1944, riding the streetcar home every day. We sat in the back
09:03and sat behind the signs. And one particular day, a white kid took the sign and he moved
09:08all the way to the back row. And there was a door at the back on these streetcars.
09:13And so when I got to my stop, I pulled the sign off and stuck it in my Mackinaw and took
09:20off running. And the kid yelled, that nigger stole the sign. And the driver came up, fired
09:27a couple of shots. I don't know if they were in the air at me, but I'm a sort of a pack
09:31rat and I still have the sign. I've held on to it.
09:34When I got home, my mother said, you shouldn't break the law. That's not right. And my father
09:40said, the law is saying that you're something less than equal. That's a bad law. Some laws
09:47need to be broken.
09:53One time, my mom and dad told me, said, Frankie, one of these days, it's going to be better.
10:00You didn't know how, you didn't know when, but you knew that it had to change.
10:05It just wasn't right. So I just longed for the day that things would change.
10:17It was about 1957, and my father took my sister and my brother and I down to the Portsmouth
10:26Public Library.
10:28There are plenty of books in the house, but there were special kinds of books in the children's
10:33area, the library, I'm sure.
10:36Dad went over and got a children's book and put the book up on the desk to be checked
10:40out, and the librarian said we couldn't check it out.
10:45And when they told us that, I wanted to know why. She said, well, colored folks can't use
10:51this library because we have a little library, a colored library, they called it. That's
10:57the one now. I have been to that library and they're very limited. I said, look in here,
11:03you have books everywhere.
11:05They don't have these kinds of books down there.
11:07I felt strongly.
11:09He stared her down and then finally said, come on, let's go.
11:13So I took my children home and immediately got in touch with the law firm.
11:19And we didn't really pay that much more attention to it until later when he told us that he
11:25had filed a suit against the city.
11:28We took it to court. The judge said, you mean to tell me that some of the taxes that Doc
11:33Owens pays go to help your library and he can't use it and his children can't use it?
11:39I tell you what, you had two choices, lock the library up lock, stock and barrel, or
11:47open the library to any taxpaying citizens, black or white.
11:53It was this feeling of triumph, you know, like, yes, we can, we can make them do that.
11:59My, my, my.
12:07The school year for blacks when I was a kid in the county school system was just four
12:12months a year because black kids had to be out to chop cotton and pick cotton.
12:16At our school, we had outdoor toilets, no cafeteria.
12:21And they were sending us way out to school out in the woods somewhere.
12:25They had to pass by three white schools to get to one black one.
12:28Our books were always outdated. When we got a textbook, it always had used in it because
12:33they were bringing books from the white schools down to our schools.
12:37We had to pay book fee for those books.
12:39And I remember we didn't have transportation to get us to school.
12:43Everybody walked to school and we would have to walk on the railroad tracks to keep the
12:47kids that were in the white bus because they rode buses from throwing spitballs out at us.
12:53We knew it was different.
12:59When we first moved to New Orleans, I was nine years old and my mother wanted to register
13:05my sister and myself for school.
13:08We were told that we had to go to a notary to state that we were Caucasian.
13:15Now that was an odd experience.
13:17My mother actually had to pay a notary and had to parade us into this office.
13:22I remember standing there wondering, am I really white?
13:25I assumed I was. I always felt that I was.
13:28But I had never really had to think of myself in that context before.
13:32I was a little bit scared that perhaps somehow I wouldn't make the cut.
13:37Maybe I would not be perceived as a white little girl.
13:41Evidently I would end up in a different school away from my friends.
13:50I thought it was wrong for us to be relegated to our older books,
13:56old science equipment, and separate schools.
14:01But then in 1954, May 17th, a naive ninth grader.
14:06I was very excited in Belgrade.
14:09I was so excited that I thought in September 1954 it would all be over.
14:27I knew that there was segregation that existed.
14:31I knew that the whites did not want to associate with the blacks.
14:36But I had no idea that white people hated blacks as much as they did
14:42until we integrated the schools.
14:46I recall the very first day of school,
14:50a special bus had been designated for us, and we were petrified.
14:55We were like little tin soldiers.
14:59I didn't say anything to anyone. None of us talked.
15:03There were state troopers and policemen to escort us
15:07and to make certain that we would arrive to school safely.
15:11I had been substituting for a year in the New Orleans public schools.
15:16So on a Friday afternoon in early November,
15:20I received a call to come to School McDonough 19
15:25on the following Monday morning to teach a first-grade class.
15:36As we approached the school,
15:39police were blocking intersections.
15:45Three little black girls came up the front steps into the school,
15:50escorted by three federal marshals.
15:53They really didn't fully understand, I believe, first-graders what was going on.
16:01I was very confused and actually a little scared.
16:05I was very confused and actually a little scared about what I was seeing,
16:10that things would escalate to this degree.
16:14With students, some of them whom I knew, I wrote in my diary,
16:18I'm so upset I can barely write.
16:21Today when I got to school at 8.30, this is what I saw.
16:26Half of the school were across the street wearing Confederate hats,
16:31waving Confederate flags and singing.
16:34The principal and assistant principal were just standing on the steps,
16:38looking across the street at them.
16:41All during the day, kids came straggling in,
16:44and I heard all sorts of reports
16:48that the kids all went downtown to the city hall and beat up Negroes,
16:53had a regular riot!
16:57The parents and neighborhood people stood across the street
17:03and they jeered and hooted at these children and the federal marshals.
17:08This went on the entire school year.
17:15I was placed on the very front row in the class,
17:19and none of the students in the class would sit next to me.
17:22None of the students in the class would sit next to me.
17:25I could hear the students making comments about me and calling me nigger,
17:30and I sat there and I trembled.
17:36One by one, two by two, and in groups,
17:39mothers came and claimed their children
17:42and proudly marched out the door.
17:46I recall vividly walking the halls of Hall High School,
17:50and to me, these huge white students standing there at their lockers,
17:54as we walked by, they would press themselves up against the locker,
17:57hollering, here come the niggers, here come the niggers,
18:00and move out of the way so that we wouldn't touch them or brush against them.
18:04We'd go to our lockers together as a group,
18:07so when you turn your back to look into your locker,
18:10someone else was watching to make sure that no one was there.
18:14To make sure that no one hit you with a book.
18:19I remember being up late at night,
18:22crying and praying and asking God,
18:25why is it that my classmates hate me so?
18:29I know that these people bleed and I bleed.
18:32They breathe and I breathe. They walk and I walk.
18:35I used to wake up in the morning feeling fine
18:38until I remember I had to go back to Hall High School,
18:42and I would literally get sick to my stomach.
18:46I don't wish what I experienced on anyone, even my worst enemy.
18:51I was the first black to walk across the stage and receive my diploma,
18:55and I felt joy in knowing that I did not have to return to that school.
19:02I was never able to vote
19:06in the state where I was born,
19:10beautiful Louisiana.
19:13This old gentleman said, could I help you?
19:16He had a thick accent.
19:18I said, yes, sir. I want to be registered.
19:20Register for what?
19:22I want to register to vote.
19:25What is your name? And I gave it.
19:27Where do you work?
19:29Madison Parish Junior Senior High School.
19:32He said, you can't register here today.
19:35That gentleman turned my name over to the school board,
19:41and my superintendent, Mr. Phillip,
19:45was confronted with the idea
19:47that he had a teacher named Hazel LeBlanc,
19:50because I wasn't married then,
19:52and that she was a communist.
19:55And then, getting married, we moved to Mississippi,
19:59and when my husband went down to vote,
20:02Reverend S. Leon Whitney,
20:04they said, okay, you're a preacher.
20:06We'll let you vote.
20:08Once they found out I was Reverend Whitney's wife,
20:12well, we'll let you vote.
20:14But then when I started talking with my teacher friends,
20:17and I said to them,
20:19why don't we all get in my car,
20:21and let's go down and register to vote?
20:23The man looked at us and said,
20:25I tell you what, I'm going to test you.
20:28Right up, he said, you failed.
20:30The next person, you failed.
20:32You failed, and we later found out
20:34that the guy had finished only the 8th grade.
20:37So it meant that there was no intent of registering anyone.
20:41And so Medgar came on the scene with the idea
20:45that we've got to register to vote.
20:49Medgar Evers was murdered in June of 63,
20:53and after his murder,
20:55there were a lot of memorial services throughout the country.
21:00And my father was a minister,
21:02so he was doing what ministers do.
21:05He was presiding at a memorial for someone who had died.
21:09And then after that was when the harassment started at our home.
21:14Now living next door to us,
21:16a fellow named Mr. Brugge,
21:18and Mr. Brugge was a really rough sort of character.
21:22He was big and bluff,
21:24and he had white hair and a burr haircut and a loud voice.
21:29He worked for the railroad,
21:31and he was a staunch supporter of George Wallace.
21:34And I say segregation now,
21:37segregation tomorrow, and segregation forever.
21:41And this led to many heated backyard discussions
21:44between Mr. Brugge and my mother.
21:47But he was also our neighbor,
21:49and this became significant one night
21:51when they burned a cross in our front yard.
22:00I remember I was seated on the sofa,
22:03which was arranged across the wall
22:05that had the big front window in it
22:08looking out onto the porch and across the road.
22:11And I glanced over my shoulder,
22:13and as I did, I could see that front window
22:16just ablaze with the fire, the reflection.
22:21And out at the end of the sidewalk,
22:23there was this huge cross, and it was burning.
22:29And they had laid that cross on our grass,
22:33and they had swathed it with rags
22:37and then poured gasoline on it
22:40and then erected it there at the end of the sidewalk
22:43where we caught the school bus every morning.
22:46And Mr. Brugge grabbed his shotgun,
22:49and he leaped in his car,
22:51and he took off trying to chase these people,
22:54and he chased them out into the country
22:56before he lost them.
22:58But for him that night,
23:00I believe the Civil Rights Movement acquired a face,
23:03and the face of that movement was the face of his neighbor.
23:11We knew that the Ku Klux Klans
23:14were watching our neighborhood and our neighborhood.
23:17We all were, you know, just frightened.
23:20They'll tell you right now,
23:22don't be out at the door, nigger.
23:30And one day I was seated at the table with my family.
23:33My husband had just asked a lesson.
23:35The person came by in the car,
23:37and they shot that da-da-da-da kind of shooting.
23:41So then it meant that we had to
23:44take the children away from the house.
23:47But we couldn't leave,
23:49because if they ever shoot in your house
23:52and you leave, they've just won.
23:58We just believed that black people was a low-life people,
24:02and they had no right to vote.
24:06They had no right to go to our school.
24:11You didn't ask to join the Klan.
24:14You was picked out in a meeting.
24:17What I was doing, I actually thought
24:20that I was doing the right thing at that time.
24:25I really believed in my heart
24:27that I was really doing the right thing.
24:29It was anger for any black person
24:31who ventured out against what the society in Mississippi
24:34and the other southern states
24:36decided that a black person should do.
24:41My husband, Vernon Dayne, was self-employed.
24:43He grew cotton as a commercial crop.
24:46He owned a small sawmill and a grocery store.
24:49We had a gas pump at the grocery store.
24:51They were on a store by their home,
24:53and they was registering blacks to vote out of the store.
24:58He'd pick them up in our car,
25:00take them down to the courthouse to register.
25:03State and the officers, they took the test,
25:05and then he'd bring them back home.
25:07We were getting threats all the time
25:09as we were going about our activities.
25:13If you went against the Klan, they would get you back.
25:16These are people who got the job done.
25:20This was a militant Klan.
25:23They had four things.
25:27They had a warning.
25:29We'd burn a cross in their front yard.
25:31That was the warning.
25:33And the next thing, we would just take somebody out and whoop them.
25:36That would be a number two.
25:38They went by numbers.
25:40Number three would be to burn their house down.
25:44And number four would be violation or to kill someone.
25:50So when the imperial wizard made the order on the Dahmer family,
25:55he called for a number three out of number four.
26:02There were two carloads of white men that came out of Jones County.
26:07I was in the number one lead car,
26:09and I knew what was supposed to take place.
26:12I knew what was going to come down.
26:14If anybody come out of that house,
26:16in my view, it was my job to shoot them.
26:22Four of them hit the store.
26:24Four hit the house at the same time.
26:27Firebombs in the house and on the outside of the house.
26:31Firebombs the vehicles and shot holes in the gas tanks.
26:34The shots were coming in the house.
26:36They were shooting at me.
26:38I yelled to him to get up.
26:40He got up and got the gun and started returning fire.
26:43It was continuously nonstop shooting the whole time.
26:48Fernand was yelling to me,
26:50try to get the children out while I hold them off.
26:54Our house was on fire.
26:56Then I saw my father shooting out of their bedroom window.
27:00I had no idea there were people that were mean enough
27:03and cruel enough that would want to kill me, a 10-year-old child.
27:07Betty was screaming all the time, saying,
27:09Lord, have mercy, we're not going to make it out of this burning house.
27:12I could hear children screaming
27:15and the voice of a man screaming out.
27:18I'll never stop hearing those voices.
27:24The house was pretty much engulfed in flames.
27:27I could still hear gunshots.
27:29My father eventually got out of the house.
27:32The other man that was shooting, he made a remark,
27:35I'll let him die, that's what we come here for.
27:39I remember my father sitting beside me
27:42and the skin was literally hanging off of his arms.
27:46I was crying because I was in excruciating pain
27:49from the burns that I had received to my arms and to my face.
27:55After a while my aunt came
27:58and she took my father, myself, my mother to the hospital.
28:02We were in the same room, my father and I were,
28:05and he never complained the whole time.
28:08But his condition began to deteriorate.
28:12If you don't vote, you don't count in this world.
28:16Those were some of the last words he said.
28:20And later on that day, he died.
28:24All he wanted to do was to be like other folks and be able to vote.
28:31He just wanted an equal chance at life,
28:35and I took that away from him.
28:39We were just at a time when blacks were sick and tired
28:44of being discriminated against, rebuffed, denied,
28:49overcharged, you name it.
28:51And when you get angry, fear seems to lead.
28:56You get to a point where your life is not the top of your list.
29:02If they wanted to kill me, they can go ahead and do it.
29:05Before I'd be a slave, I'd be buried in my grave.
29:08That becomes real.
29:13Let the drums roll.
29:15Peel the bells.
29:17Let the trumpets blare.
29:20There's a new Negro now, and he's moving.
29:23And he says to you, come on and join me,
29:25but if you won't get out of my way, because I'm coming through.
29:29As the word got out, we're going to let the kids march.
29:34We're asking you parents to let your kids march.
29:38They want us to march.
29:41What you going to do? What you going to do?
29:43You going to go on? You going to go on?
29:45My mother said, don't get involved.
29:47You go to jail, I can't get you out of jail.
29:49I had already made up my mind.
29:54They gave us signs.
29:56I don't know what the signs said.
29:58I didn't care what they said.
30:01We had a designated line.
30:03We could only march one foot away from the building.
30:06I was tired of walking in this invisible line.
30:11So I stepped out of the line.
30:13I said, we don't have to walk like this.
30:15I said, we're going to march all over this sidewalk.
30:17And I threw my sign up.
30:20Next thing I know, the police started coming up to me with the dog.
30:23And I began to try to get back in line.
30:25The police grabbed me in the collar.
30:27And the dog was coming after me.
30:29He acted like he couldn't hold his dog back enough.
30:32And the dog was pinching my pants.
30:34So I grabbed his hand.
30:36Take your hand off me, nigga.
30:38Take your hand off me, nigga.
30:40And I just said, I ain't going to let that dog bite me.
30:43He said, take your hand off me.
30:45I said, I ain't going to let that dog bite me.
30:47I was like, Lord, why are you letting this happen to me?
31:00Each night, we'd go to watch TV.
31:02And there on the television screen was young people about my age
31:07being bitten by vicious police dogs
31:09and knocked over by high-powered fire hoses.
31:12And they were all singing about this thing called freedom.
31:15And I didn't have a clue as to what this thing about freedom was all about.
31:21I was baptized that day when I walked out of Linnear High School.
31:26My brothers had told me that there was going to be a walkout.
31:29I didn't have a clue as to what a walkout was going to be.
31:32But they told me at 12 o'clock the next day, I'd better walk out of school.
31:39You have no fears at 12 years old.
31:41You just have a sense that this is the most right thing to be doing.
31:44But white law enforcement officials resented the fact that young blacks
31:48had the audacity to come and challenge the system in the way that we did.
31:53And as a 7th grade student, for participating in a walkout,
31:56I was arrested and taken to the Mississippi State Fairgrounds
32:01and incarcerated in the livestock compounds.
32:06And I spent several days in jail there.
32:09When I was released, we went to a mass meeting at the Masonic Temple
32:14and the auditorium was filled to capacity.
32:16And they asked me, because I was one of the younger ones, to get arrested.
32:20To get up and try to encourage others to come out and join the demonstrations.
32:23I was so short I had to stand up in a chair to reach the microphone.
32:27And I don't know what I said that evening,
32:29but the audience was on their feet applauding and cheering.
32:44Things got very, very tense in the city.
32:48There had been beatings, there had been all kinds of things going on.
32:51And so my mom was really afraid for my safety.
32:54My mom said, now don't you all go to the march, it's going to be too dangerous.
32:58But my best friend in college at that time said, well, I want to march.
33:02And I said, I do too.
33:04So I said, we'll be right back, Mom.
33:06I'm going to the store.
33:08So we turned the corner and, hey, there were people there getting ready to march.
33:11So Carol and I said, all right, we're going to march.
33:14Well, about 30 minutes later, who would turn the corner but my mama.
33:20She had a finger that looked like it was six feet long.
33:24And she crooked that finger and said, come here.
33:28It's not so much that she was anti-march, she was anti-her baby getting hurt.
33:361960 or 61, in the wintertime, my daughter Jessica,
33:40who was in her late teens, borrowed her father's car,
33:43and she was planning to go between New York City, where we lived, and Washington
33:48to desegregate the restaurants along Route 40.
33:52And she invited me to go, and I thought it was a good thing to do, so I said yes.
33:57There were about 500 cars, and we had to meet just north of the Maryland border.
34:03And from all over the big parking lot,
34:07you heard voices, we need a black in our car, we need a black in our car.
34:11We had to have a black in every car, otherwise there was no point to the ride.
34:15And I was so innocent and naive that I didn't realize I was putting myself in danger.
34:19But what bothered me the most, I think, was the fact that I was the oldest person there.
34:23I was 40 years old, and these were all kids like my daughter.
34:26And I was ashamed for my generation that they were not taking part in this.
34:31We were told we could go into any restaurant we liked along Route 40 in Maryland and order coffee.
34:39The first one we went to, a young white woman said,
34:42I'm sorry, we don't serve black people here.
34:44And we said, well, we'll stay until you do.
34:46Well, then I'll have to call the sheriff.
34:48Only one person in each car was a spokesperson.
34:51Nobody else was to say a word.
34:53And when she said, we don't serve blacks here, I got furious and I said,
34:56Nobody else was to say a word.
34:57And when she said, we don't serve blacks here, I got furious and I started to say something.
35:01And our spokesman said, no, no.
35:03I'd forgotten.
35:04I wasn't used to that.
35:05Coming from New York, I wasn't used to that.
35:09She called the sheriff, and he handed her a piece of paper that was a Maryland Trespass Act.
35:14And he stood there while she read it.
35:16But she was trembling.
35:17She was afraid.
35:18All of the people along that road were all terrified that we were going to be violent.
35:23And it was a nonviolent ride.
35:26And when she finished, she got up and left.
35:28So that was one we failed on.
35:30But we must have hit, I guess, about 20 restaurants that day.
35:33And at least four of them we managed to desegregate because they served us our coffee.
35:38That's how we knew we were desegregated.
35:41Now I'm 85 years old.
35:43I look back at these memories, and I'm very grateful that I had the opportunity.
35:47I think it's one of the best things I've ever done in my life.
35:51As I sat at the lunch counter, people would come in with bats, with a gun, people to harass you.
36:01The police came, and instead of arresting them, they arrested us.
36:08This arrest led to five of us spending 49 days in jail.
36:13And this became the first jail-in in the nation.
36:20Of course I was concerned about what could happen.
36:23Because you could get lost in a Florida jail.
36:27But I was also determined.
36:29I wanted to make a difference. I wanted to be free.
36:32And I would not pay for segregation.
36:34We could have paid the fine, and we could have gotten out of jail.
36:37Instead, we went to jail for 49 days.
36:39We were suspended from college, Florida A&M University.
36:45People all around the country wrote to us.
36:48People just could not believe that we could be sitting in jail because we went to get a sandwich.
36:56If I can't be a first-class citizen, I'm already dead.
37:04How can you kill me when I'm already dead?
37:09I got out of nursing school in 1963, and I went to Atlanta, Georgia,
37:14and got a job at Grady Memorial Hospital.
37:17If you split the hospital in half, everything on A and B was white.
37:21Everything on C and D was colored from the ground up.
37:25The day that Grady Hospital integrated, everybody was afraid,
37:30because we didn't know what was going to happen.
37:32I received one of the white patients.
37:35She was a post-op patient, had just been operated on that day.
37:38I put her in a room.
37:40Obviously, her husband was not happy.
37:46I don't want you taking care of my wife.
37:48I don't want your G.D. black hands on my wife.
37:52You leave my wife alone.
37:54I didn't pay him any attention.
37:56I was young.
37:57I knew I had a job to do.
37:59I was going to do it regardless of what,
38:01so I started to take care of her.
38:04It was at that moment that he picked me up,
38:07carried me to the door, and threw me down the hallway.
38:11I just rolled like a little ball down the hall.
38:14I was humiliated, and I was angry,
38:18but I really knew that I probably couldn't do anything
38:21because I would lose my job.
38:23So I just picked myself up off the floor, went back in the room.
38:27He had pulled her I.V. out, disconnected her from everything,
38:31picked her up, put her in a wheelchair,
38:34and took her out of the hospital.
38:37I think it was about 3 weeks later, I was sitting at the desk.
38:41I saw him coming through the doors, and I said to myself,
38:44oh, my God, what does he want now?
38:46I thought he was coming back to beat me up.
38:50Little lady, I didn't say anything at first.
38:54I didn't say anything at first.
38:57Little lady, I'm talking to you, and I said, did you need something?
39:02And he said, I just wanted to let you know
39:07that I'm sorry for putting my hands on you.
39:11I should never have touched you because of what I did.
39:16I don't have a wife, my wife died, and my kids don't have a mother.
39:22And then he started crying.
39:24I saw these tears dropping on top of the desk.
39:27In my mind, I was saying, it's what you deserve,
39:30because it didn't have to be like this.
39:32You could have let her stay here.
39:34She would have still been alive because I would have taken care of her.
39:37But I knew I couldn't say that, so I didn't say anything.
39:41I just got up from the desk and left.
39:44That has stayed with me all of these years.
39:47It hasn't gone away.
39:52Congratulations!
40:00My father never reconciled with the fact
40:04that his father was murdered by white men.
40:11He never trusted the white man.
40:16And he always told us to be on our guard.
40:19He would tell us, never trust him, never trust him.
40:23And he always said, you have to start with the color of their skin.
40:27Sometimes my father was so bitter that
40:31if we brought African Americans home that were light-skinned,
40:36he would say they were tainted.
40:40I am appreciative of my mom for telling us and embedding in us
40:45that it's not the color of your skin.
40:48It's the content of your character.
40:50And not to judge a person unless you want to be judged the same way.
40:57And I think that that could be one of our saving graces for my siblings
41:02that we did not have that heart and heart.
41:05A lot of lives have been lost and sacrificed to get us where we are.
41:09And not to say that you should dwell on the past,
41:12but we are learning from the past and we cannot take it for granted.
41:15Because if we do, it will surely come back to haunt us.
41:21My father passed away three years ago.
41:23And he never came to that reconciliation point with the races.
41:39I wish that I could live that part of my life over.
41:46My brother convinced me to go to the FBI.
41:51And I did. I told him I was sorry.
41:53I pleaded guilty in federal court to conspiracy.
41:56I was sentenced to five years in prison.
42:01I prayed on my knees on many nights that God would forgive me
42:06for the awful things that I'd done to the Zamer family and to other people.
42:10It wasn't just them.
42:12I often wondered what would I do or say if I ever met up with the Zamer family.
42:17The Zamer junior walked into my cell at Hattiesburg.
42:22I didn't know what to say or what to think when he walked in.
42:25He told me, he said, Billy Roy, he said, just take it easy.
42:30Don't get upset. He said, I want to tell you something.
42:33He said, I'm speaking for my mother and I and the entire family.
42:38He said, we forgive you for what you've done.
42:44It was like, you know, God had more than answered my prayers.
42:49The Zamer family approached the governor
42:53and asked the governor for a pardon for me.
43:00And he did. He gave me a full pardon.
43:04And he did. He gave me a full pardon.
43:07If somebody had done that to me and had killed my father,
43:12I wonder if I could do the same thing again.
43:20The stories you just heard are only a fraction of the more than a thousand
43:24already collected by the Voices of Civil Rights Project.
43:27If it weren't for this ambitious effort and the generosity of the storytellers,
43:32these powerful oral histories might well have been lost forever.
43:36As it is, all of them now have a permanent home at the Library of Congress.
43:40You can find them now or tell your own story
43:43by going to VoicesofCivilRights.org.
43:46For the History Channel, I'm Makai Pfeiffer.
43:49Thanks for watching.
44:02© transcript Emily Beynon